1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system for sending image data generated by a host computer to an image processing apparatus via an infrastructure such as a network and printing the image data on an actual sheet of paper.
The reduction of Total Cost of Ownership including not only an initial cost of installing a printer or a system but also a cost of consumables such as printing sheets or a coloring material such as toner have drawn much attention from the viewpoint of cost reduction in an office or preserving global environment. Conventional problems include that in the case where a printer is set in an office and can be accessed to a network, anybody can print maters by using the printer. In such a case, the printing limitation is not imposed on anybody and no footprint is left. As the user is not restrained, sometimes printing exceeding the originally required output limit is performed. That leads increased cost of the office.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to address that, many units including the printing limitation by address information such as an IP address in the TCP/IP as a first unit, and the printing system that implements management of the number of print as it obtains the printing log as a second unit are realized. The first unit is quite rough method by which a particular IP address is limited, however, so that it cannot perform detailed management such as to limit the number of output by a particular user. According to the second unit, a log can be left by output but a great personal cost is required in examining whether unauthorized printing is performed or not by an administrator monitoring the log each time. That causes the unit to deviate from the purpose of reducing TCO. In order to solve the abovementioned problem, a user limitation function for limiting output for each user is proposed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-150366.
On the other hand, some solutions are proposed for approaches for limiting various functions provided by a printer driver. For example, the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-220532 refers to a method for disabling selection from the printing setting dialog screen of the printer driver as a method for performing a function limitation. As mentioned above, the available number of print is limited for each user or a function of the printer driver to be used when the printing is done in the host computer is limited in the conventional printing system. In such a conventional system, a main purpose has been such that the limitation of the limiting side is one-sidedly applied.
Conventionally, no exception of the printing setting is allowed for a user or a group of users to be limited. Therefore, when function limitation of the limitation system and a function desired by a user are inconsistent with each other, the operation was taken such that it is forcibly rounded to the setting at the limitation system side (imposed printing) or such that the printing is forbidden (printing stop) or the like.
Actually in such limitation system environment, as the printing function is excessively limited, the user's convenience is sacrificed.
If the imposed printing is executed, the printing is executed with the printing setting by prioritizing the limitation at the limitation system side. As a result, a printing result unexpected for the user is output. That increases the unwanted cost relating to sheets of paper or the other cost relating to the printing.
If the printing is stopped, function limitations at the limitation system side and a function desired by a user may inconsistent with each other. In such a case, the unwanted cost relating to the sheets of paper or relating to the printing can be prevented from occurring. The functions originally provided by the printing apparatus, however, may not be utilized. Further, meaningless setting or inconsistent setting may be imposed to the user. As a result, the user sometimes cannot have the result corresponding to the cost of installing the printing apparatus.